Margaret Bondfield

Margaret Bondfield (17 March 1873-16 June 1953) was Minister for Labour of the United Kingdom from 8 June 1929 to 24 August 1931, succeeding Arthur Steel-Maitland and preceding Henry Betterton. A member of the socialist Labor Party, she was the first woman to hold a cabinet position in Britain.

Biography
Margaret Grace Bondfield was born in Chard, Somerset, England on 17 March 1873, and she had a background of trade unionism before being elected as a Labor Party MP for Northampton in 1923. In the first Labor government of 1924, she was parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Labor, and she lost her seat when the government fell at the end of the year. She returned to Parliament in 1926 as MP for Wallsend, and she became the first female cabinet minister in Britain as Minister of Labor in 1929. She was unable to deal with the unemployment of her time, and she voted for cuts in government expenditure in 1931, when she again lost her seat. She went on to work with a number of welfare organizations after leaving office, and she died in Sanderstead, Surrey in 1953 at the age of 80. She had a mixed legacy; she served party and union for years and broke through gender boundaries, but her actions in office had nearly betrayed her cause.